Social Business Tools

Here is an observation about the internal use of Social Media in Business – News from USA TODAY

Beyond advertising on Facebook or Twitter, companies are using social networks to build teams that solve problems faster, share information better among their employees and partners, bring customer ideas for new product designs to market earlier, and redesign all kinds of corporate software in Facebook’s easy-to-learn style. Social media reinventing how business is done

Heavy use of social tools has a statistically significant correlation to profitability, said Michael Chui, senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute. But it’s early: Only about 3% of respondents used social business tools for all three major uses — reaching customers, connecting employees and coordinating with suppliers, McKinsey said.

“You’ve got to let the conversations happen, even if you might not like all of that conversation,” Shurts said. “It’s going to happen around the water cooler anyway.”

if you want to check out more articles and links on Social Business try the Twitter hashtag #socbiz

A few benefits of using social tools for business

Improves connection with customers and involves them early in the product design process (Dell’s examples of Ideastorm)

Improves internal communication and knowledge (IBM and other businesses)